5.1 theatre mix>Stereo broadcast mix

[wheresmyfroggy]

I am currently involved in a project being mixed for a one off theatrical performance and the client has requested a stereo version for possible broadcast.

Having been involved in a few 5.1 broadcast projects the usual route we have chosen to make the collapsed mix is to put it through an s360 imaging plugin to create a stereo mix and tweak where necessary.

But when mixing with the room lined up for theatrical the translation to a stereo mix is way of the mark.

If anyone out there does this sort of work regularly how do you go about creating the collapse down?

Do you:

1: completely remix stero broadcast mix from scratch

2: remix 5.1 mix to broadcast spec and the do the collapse down with an s360 imager or similar

3: apply imager to original theatre mix and tweak

4: none of the above

Any comments would be very helpful

Cheers

Tom

[damiao]

There is Dolby plug-in that encodes from 5.1 to 2.0. I don't really remember the name but there is one.

[pat yacono]

Well, you wouldn't really want to collapse your 5.1 to create a stereo mix. You wouldn't use imager either, you would use the mixdown plug in the same waves 360 package, but I don't believe you should just collapse the mix for stereo. Normally the deliverables are a 5.1 mix and a 2.0 LTRT, not an LoRo. If your mix originated as a 5.1, you should technically do another mix through the dolby hardware, or surround tools just to make sure everything is jiving. One thing that DVD players do that is nice on downmix is shift the phase of the rear signal so it decodes on a pro logic decoder if the audio is tagged for that in the metadata of the ac3 file, however, this wouldn't happen with the mixdown plug from waves.

[wheresmyfroggy]

Sorry i meant mixdown not imager

Thanks for the advice though